Clueless writing about our sport

[Atticus]

IAAF World Indoor Championship 2019: Broadcast And Schedule!
it is about the World Indoor Bowls Championships (lawn bowling).

WTF? I'm failing to discern how that kind of mistake would even be possible?

[br]

This is not about T&F writing, but amusing nonetheless.

This headline from the NB Post Gazette, a New Brunswick newspaper, caught my eye.

IAAF World Indoor Championship 2019: Broadcast And Schedule!

Naturally I was curious, so I opened it up and very quickly found out it is about the World Indoor Bowls Championships (lawn bowling). Indoor lawn bowling is on a synthetic surface and there is also a World Outdoor Bowls Championship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowls

I mention all of this because, like the headline says, it is the IAAF World Indoor Championship and they are showing a picture of a high jumper.

IAAF-World-Indoor-Championship-2019-Broadcast-And-Schedule-744x446.jpg

The lawn bowlers association in Canada must be livid.

[dj]

It never dawned on me that Bouncy Moore's name came from his parents' love of the Lengthy Bounce!

[Atticus]

clueless translation

Ah, the joys of Google Translate . . .

[tandfman]

Not sure whether this is clueless writing or clueless translation from some language into English, or both. In any event, it's hilarious. It's a discussion of the IAAF's men's AOY nominees that includes this paragraph:

>>Within the listing of candidates, revealed on the web site of the group, joined Kenyans Timothy Cherut (ladies’s 1,500 m), Eliud Kipchoge (marathon) and Emmanuel Korir (operating at 800 m), the People Christian Coleman and Noah Lyles (each dash), the Frenchman Kevin Mayer (all-round), new Zealander Tomas Walsh (shot put), Qatari, Abderrahman Samba (operating hurdles four hundred m), Sweden Arman, Duplantis (pole vault) and the consultant of South Africa, educating and academic Affiliation Manyonga (lengthy bounce).<<

https://newseg.pro/2018/10/23/the-russians-werent-included-within-the-record-of-nominees-for-the-title-of-greatest-athlete-on-the-earth/

[tandfman]

Here's an article that quotes Billy Mills describing the first time he met Steve Prefontaine's mother:

>>"She told me that Steve [Prefontaine] wanted to win that Olympic race in 1964," <<

Not sure who was confused, Mills or Pre's mom, but the writer shouldn't have let that get into print without some explanation or comment. Pre was 13 years old in 1964.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/sports/meet-billy-mills-olympian-and-track-and-field-hall-of-famer/article/535029#ixzz5UZXAVtan

[tandfman]

Bring Back The 1500!

And the discus throw!

[Atticus]

The so-called middle-distance races have two events, a 800 m and a 3,000 m race.

Bring Back The 1500!

[gh]

from the Lima 2019 (Pan-Am G) site, describing our sport:

<<ATHLETICS
Athletics is the oldest form of organized sport and includes track and field events*. The track events comprise: races, jumps, throws, combined events and race walk. Sprint events include an indoor 60 m race and outdoor races of 100 m, 200 m and 400 m with their respective relays, which take place outdoors. In hurdles, we have 110 m and 400 m events. The so-called middle-distance races have two events, a 800 m and a 3,000 m race. The long-distance races cover 5,000 m and 10,000 m. Marathon consists of events of 42 km and 195 m, and is considered the classic long-distance Olympic event. In addition, athletics features 4x100 relay, 4x400, high jump, long jump, triple jump, and pole vault. As for field events, they include the following disciplines: shot put, hammer throw, and javelin throw.>>

I know taht if I'm going to run one of the marathons it'll be the 195m version!

(I do realize that some of this is just translation errors)

[tandfman]

If we included tv gaffes, this thread would be ten times as long.

[KDFINE]

The TV screen for day 2 of the World Cup listed a PR of 47.11 for the French intermediate hurdler. Say what?!?

[tandfman]

This is from the USATF press release after the first day of the Athletics World Cup:

>>
In the last women’s field event final, 8-time USATF champion Kara Winger (Colorado Springs, Colorado) sat in first place in the javelin after five rounds of throws with 60.75m/199-3. <<

There were only four rounds of throws in the event.

Press release is linked from front page headline section.

[El Toro]

Not when a sport already has a protocol in place to report results!
I remember a NY Times article that reported a meet in which Carl Lewis ran a 10.00 (back when that was a very significant time). The sentence said, "Lewis's time was ten seconds." That is a succinct and accurate statement, but does not begin to indicate what the sport's fans are expecting from a meet report.

You mean protocol as in USATF, which has a conversion page, which helpfully provides a decimal example (ex: 6' 3.25") for inputting imperial to metric conversions?

If the average, non-specialist, innumerate journalist bothered to search for sport specific conversion, they'd likely get to this page, see that decimals are OK and then revert back to whatever conversion workflow they use for plagiarising non-US articles.

This could be Google or other online calculators as previously suggested or they may rely on the inbuilt automatic converters that I believe are available in some publishing software and which automatically convert and insert relevant text. Decimals for the win!

[bambam1729]

And more on decimalization of Imperial marks. National Geographic has an article I read on the plane to day on Science and Sport. Its by Christine Brennan who is knowledgable on international sports and the Olympics, although T&F is not her specialty. I suspect her copy editors got to it, when she discussed Beamon's mark and Powell's world record, describing them as 29 feet 2.36 inches, and 29 feet 4.39 inches.

[Atticus]

you could say it's a reasonable approach if you must persist with the imperial system.

Not when a sport already has a protocol in place to report results!
I remember a NY Times article that reported a meet in which Carl Lewis ran a 10.00 (back when that was a very significant time). The sentence said, "Lewis's time was ten seconds." That is a succinct and accurate statement, but does not begin to indicate what the sport's fans are expecting from a meet report.